While the likes of Future Group, Shoppers Stop, Westside and Reliance Retail are driving the focus on customer relationship management (CRM), restaurant chains like Speciality Restaurants (SRPL) are also gung-ho on the same. “The CRM programmes are important for any retail chain and they work, especially during a recessionary trend. They give customers some comfort and ensure that they keep coming back again and again,” SRPL chairman and MD Anjan Chatterjee told ET.

SRPL’s loyalty programme currently has 70,000-odd customers within its folds, who account for 30-35% of their sales. “We are now planning a marketing blitz to penetrate into 70% of our target audience by July-August,” said Mr Chatterjee.

Within six months, Future Group is planning to roll out a single loyalty programme that spans across formats. The group is currently investing heavily on the IT backbone. Currently, the group’s Green Card loyalty programme at Pantaloons accounts for 55% of sales.

“As the first step towards a uniform loyalty scheme, we have rolled out a prepaidcum-loyalty card in Pune and Kolkata. We’ve clocked nearly Rs 15 crore business out of this. Eventually, we expect 70% of our sales from lifestyle formats to be generated from loyalty scheme customers,” said Future Group president-customer strategies Sandip Tarkas.

Interestingly, Reliance Retail already operates its ‘RelianceOne’ loyalty programme across formats with four million customers. “We see a significant percentage of our sales coming from our loyalty card holders,” said a Reliance Retail spokesperson.

Shoppers Stop has just launched a new loyalty scheme for its hypermarket ‘Hypercity’. “The loyalty programme is a long-term strategic initiative, which drives repeated purchases. We add nearly three lakh customers under loyalty every year,” said Shoppers Stop MD BS Nagesh. As of end-2008, the retailer had more than 11.8 lakh loyalty members.

Westside has relaxed the entry norms for its loyalty programme ‘Clubwest’ to cash in on the large footfalls the store is witnessing due to Nano bookings. Earlier, to become a silver member, one had to shop for Rs 2,000 on one occasion and register. “Now, a customer can enrol for the programme even by shopping for Rs 500 and subsequently get upgraded, if he completes Rs 2,000 billing within three months,” said Westside marketing-head Smeeta Neogi. The chain currently has over eight lakh members, who generate over 50% of sales.

Brands like Café Coffee Day, Pizza Hut, Provogue, Kaya, Fastrack, Gili and a host of others have launched prepaid cards. A prepaid card works like a debit card with a PIN number that can be redeemed at the brands’ outlets. The cards in India are based on the closed loop model — that is, they can be redeemed only at the brand’s stores. “When I have money loaded on the card, the tendency to come to the same place is higher,” says K Ramakrishnan, marketing president at Cafe Coffee Day. The brand’s card Cafe Moments, launched this month, offers a 5% bonus on cards with a value of Rs 100 to Rs 499, 7% on Rs 500 to Rs 999 and 10% on Rs 1,000 and above.

A prepaid card obviates the need to pay cash every time, and it also enables faster accumulation of bonus points or other offers. Prepaid cards in India are currently being used more as gift cards. Some brands have used it to launch a promotion or a service. What the prepaid gift card did for Kaya was to generate incremental walk-ins,” says Suvodeep Das, marketing head at Kaya Skin Clinic. In Kaya prepaid cards, currency can be reloaded in multiples of Rs 500 to up to Rs 2 lakh. Kaya sells about 250-300 gift cards a month.

Global Prepaid Exchange recently estimated that the size of the organized prepaid gift card and gift voucher market in India is Rs 2,000 crore and would grow to Rs 8,000 crore by 2015. “The acceptance of gift cards in proportion to vouchers has increased significantly,” says Pratap T P, chief marketing officer at QwikCilver Solutions, a provider of prepaid card solutions.

However, Devangshu Dutta, CEO of retail consultancy Third Eyesight, says growth in prepaid cards would be restricted by the fact that they can be used only at a particular brand’s outlets. “Also, a customer cannot claim the minimum residual value in the card. He will have to top it up to redeem it,” he says.